My HM race preview.

To me, there's nothing more unnerving than to go into a race with little or no idea as to your current state of fitness. In less than two days, I'll be running a half-marathon. My PB is 1:26:42 in 2004 during a busy racing/training season. Over the next year, I ran two HMs a month or so after marathons and clocked 1:28:48 and 1:28:52 in those races. Those races resemble this one in the sense that I'd trained hard, but hadn't run much longer than 10 miles for 5-6 weeks and was feeling not fully healthy; they were, after all after hard marathons.

This time, I'm coming off a winter of treadmill training with no racing and only 2 runs of the 13- mile distance. I'm banged-up feeling because I was not fully healthy when I switched from treadmill to streets at the end of winter. Now, I've got several hot spots--left periformis, right knee, left knee, and left ankle--that bother me after my runs, but I'll feel flare-ups during runs.

On the positive side, I've done weekly tempo runs around HM pace for 5K on the treadmill, and my outdoor runs have often been at close to marathon pace, though they're turny and hilly. My mileage has been higher: over 50/week average for 20 weeks.

Also, the weather has been cool in Sudbury, which helps me big-time. Last year I ran two HMs and both were much slower than my usual times: 1:37 and 1:35. The 1:37, was a race I took a big chance on by running. I'd been injured for 7 weeks(unable to run at all for 4 of those weeks, then only 20/mpw after that. I didn't care about time, ad was happy to make it. The 1:35, was two months later. I was back in decent shape, but the course was on trails and added 3-8 minutes to every one's times. I was in 1:30 shape then.

So this time, I'm not close to great shape, but should be able to put in a decent effort. It's a long drive, so I hope so.

I'm sure I'll laugh at this later. I usually do.